Let me commend to you a new book by Kathleen Rehl, Moving Forward on Your Own: A Financial Guidebook for Widows. Kathleen, a fee-only financial planner, was my guest on my last teleconference. (See here for my brief summary of her comments.) I bought the book after the teleconference, and it’s a wonderful resource. A widow herself, Kathleen has put together a book which is both artistic and practical. Several sections of the book would be good for anyone, such as “What’s Your Money Style.” She says, “Ultimately, it’s not about the money. Rather, it’s about understanding your money and how you react so you recognize your natural inclinations toward spending, saving, giving, and investing, and what’s motivating those habits.” That’s something we all need to work on.

Here are ten tips for church leaders on money and values:

1. Write down what your values about money are. It’s hard to lead others in this area if you are not clear yourself.

2. Start conversations with others, especially church leaders, where you ask them questions about their values about money. This is a contribution to them as well as to congregational life. Do this in a light and curious way, rather than a heavy-handed way.

3. Preach a sermon where you articulate your values about money to the congregation. Do this at a time which is not stewardship/pledge time.

4. Review your own spending. Compare your actual use of money with your stated values about it.

5. Assess the church budget to see what you think it says about the actual values of the congregation. Ask other leaders what they think the budget says about the church’s values (without trying to convince them to agree with your assessment).

6. Read some of the Scripture passages about money and try to imagine you are reading them for the first time. What values are expressed? Be open to surprising new perspectives.

7. Notice, without judgment, the choices you and others make about the church’s financial resources. See what you can learn over time about what is most valued.

8. Ask yourself, if you were going to add a new value about money, what would it be? (For example: generosity to self, tithing, buying locally.) Try acting as if this were one of your values for a day or a week.

9. Interview your best friend to find out what his or her values around money are. Notice how the responses are similar to and different from your own.

10. Put your own statement of values where you will find it a year from now. When you read it, notice if anything has changed.

Bill Easum has a great post over on Church Central, where I also blog, on Why Pastors Should Know what Everyone Gives. Read it.

Financial adviser Kathleen Rehl had some terrific recommendations in today’s teleconference. She said that clergy who do better with their money “pay attention to their stuff and where it’s at.” They save some of their money (she recommends 10%), and they are aware of and take advantage of tax benefits for clergy.

She said some clergy say to her, “God will provide.” She says, “I believe God provides for us, but God gives us tools to get involved.” For those who are stuck in this area, she suggests expressing an intent to want to do something about it. “If there’s no desire, it’s not going to happen.” She suggests taking one small step at a time to move forward.

Asked how clergy might deal with the economic uncertainty we all face, she said, “I like to focus on things that you have control over.” These are items such as what you spend, what you can save, the length of time you are invested, and investing in a variety of investments. What you don’t have control over is market return. She suggests ignoring all the TV shows and financial magazines which say one thing one day and another the next.

The recording of the teleconference is available. E-mail me at Margaret@margaretmarcuson.com, and I’ll send you the link. Kathleen Rehl is the author of Moving Forward on Your Own: A Financial Guidebook for Widows, coming out next week.

Pastoral leaders need to pay attention to their own personal finances. If we can be thoughtful about personal money management, it will help our leadership in stewardship and church finances. You can’t lead others where you haven’t gone yourself. Does this mean that you have to get yourself together completely before you can lead people to work on their own financial issues? No. But you have to be honestly working on your own life with money.

These matters are not just financial: they are emotional and spiritual. We can make anxious choices about money, whether we are spending with a credit card, postponing investment decisions, or never asking for a raise because people might get upset. Or we can make thoughtful choices and take responsibility for our own financial future-which can be hard. I know this myself: I’ve taken years to make certain financial decisions.

Here are some ways I have found to work on these issues: I’ve learned more about the history of how my family has dealt with money through the generations. I’ve joined a financial accountability group where I make commitments every month on actions I will take about financial matters. And I’m cultivating the spiritual practice of tracking my own anxiety about money daily, recognizing that the fear I can feel is not from God.

My spiritual director talks about the way money has us, rather than us having money. When money has us, we are emotionally fused with it. We are dependent on it in ways beyond the material. This is true whether we have a lot or a little, whether we are right on top of all our records, bills and investments or we have piles of unopened statements on the dining room table. It’s true of congregations, too: does your church have money, or does money have your church? When money has us, it’s hard for God to have us. Our fear about money gets in the way of our relationship with God and our leadership in the congregation. How might your own financial situation be influencing your role in the church’s finances?

Have the goal of being less anxious. I’m never going to be non-anxious about money, but I’m less anxious about it than I used to be. I’m better able to manage my money, plan about it and make decisions about it – and trust that God is caring for me, now and into the future. Money “has me” less than it used to. I am freer. And I can testify that a little lower anxiety goes a long way, both at church and in personal life.

Here are some questions to consider as you work on your own personal finances:

1. How do you make decisions about money?
2. What are your patterns of saving? Spending? Giving?
3. What resources do you have to help you make decisions? (Denominational resources, fee-based financial advisers, books or periodicals or online resources you like.)
4. If you struggle in this area, what would be one very small step you could take to help yourself?
5. If you are strong financially, what is the next thing you need to do?

In your church, who knows who gives, and who knows how much they give? This is a question that has come up on a number of the teleconferences this year. My June guest, Charles LaFond, expressed very strongly his view that the minister needs to know. And I understand that in Episcopal churches that is standard practice. In my own Baptist tradition there’s often a practice that the pastor does not know.

One of the problems when the pastor doesn’t know is that key leaders, including board members, may be giving nothing or next to nothing. Or members who are making a lot of trouble may be giving nothing. And no one knows except the financial secretary. When the pastor doesn’t know, there’s a triangle between him or her, the member, and the record-keeper, with the pastor on the outside. In something as important as financial stewardship, I’m coming to think that’s not a good thing.

I know that some churches have high anxiety about this issue. The church I served for 13 years was one of them. I have to confess I never fought this battle. But I did finally make my own pledge public: I figured I could tell my own secret. That alone gave me more freedom in preaching and teaching about stewardship.

At a recent presentation I gave on churches and money, I asked people to submit questions they had on the topic. One person wrote down a comment: “For a long time I thought I shouldn’t know what people gave. I have now come to understand I can be a better pastor if I know someone is hurting, and I am more confident in myself that I won’t play favorites with bigger givers. I also see giving as discipleship and I’m called to help people grow in this area too. I’m not there, but I am growing.” Well said.

What do you think?

It’s no secret that many churches and pastors are worried about money nowadays. But Edwin Friedman used to say, “The issue is never the issue.” He meant that issues and problems which are perennial in church life, or the latest hot-button challenge, are really primarily a focus for people’s anxiety. We live in highly anxious times, and there’s a lot of free-floating anxiety around. Somehow we attach it to certain issues. In church life a few are favorites: music, children and youth ministry. And, of course, money. As one pastor said, “There always seems to be an exclamation point when money is involved.”

Of course there are genuine financial challenges that must be faced. Bills must be paid. Staff must receive their salaries. The endowment must be managed. Budgeting must be done (and sometimes cuts must be made). But if we can delete that exclamation point and stay calm even when others are anxious, we’ll provide better leadership and the church will make better decisions about financial matters.

Charles LaFond had some fascinating things to say about money and spirituality in the life of the church in Thursday’s teleconference. He said only half of the financial stewardship task is to raise the money: “It’s also a pastoral ministry with people who are having to deal with money every day.” He suggested that people are longing for the church to speak on this topic. “They know in their gut that spending money on themselves is not the goal. People are in this maelstrom, this storm in which fear and money converge. They are looking for a way to make right their relationships with God and with money.” This struck me — how often do we think of the stewardship campaign as pastoral.

He suggested that talking about the issue of money and how we live our life in relationship to it is an urgent matter, similar to what priests and ministers in London where people had experienced death and destruction in plague and the Great Fire. Preachers had to talk about it, and in the same way, clergy need to address the issue of money. “Our version of plague and fire is money, our greed, and the commercialization of language.” He suggested that in this day, clergy need to “preach boldly about money and possessions.” They also need to be teaching the essentials of the spiritual life such as silence, sabbath and spiritual practice — even beginning by suggesting families light a candle for five minutes in the morning.

And of course, that means that clergy need a spiritual life of their own. He said that in his ministry of spiritual direction at a retreat house for several years, he was struck so often by how exhausted and “un-sabbathed” the clergy were. Now in his conversations with churches before he does stewardship consulting, he first talks with the clergy and key lay leaders about their own spiritual lives.

The Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire has some wonderful stewardship resources on their website. The recording of the teleconference is available. E-mail me at Margaret@margaretmarcuson.com, and I’ll send you the link.

Do you look for spiritual support or guidance for your leadership? Whatever your own way, whether it’s private prayer, consulting a spiritual director or mentor, or taking a retreat, make sure you use it when you are leading in the area of money. If we can act on our spiritual principles rather than out of fear and anxiety, we will be able to make different financial decisions. If we seek to be thoughtful and not reactive, we will make different decisions. If we are able, out of spiritual power, to stick to our plan in the face of the reactivity of others, our churches will be healthier and more resilient places.

One pastor decided to go back to a basic daily prayer life at a time of financial crisis in the church. He found that this alone helped him to relate differently to the church finances. He simply went to the worship space every morning and sat there for five minutes. It wasn’t much, he knew, but he had spent so many years grinding away at his ministry, especially the financial and administrative side, without any kind of spiritual support. He intentionally prayed about the church’s finances and asked for the ability to let go. He noticed a small change almost immediately, and over time, he found that he was able to be quite different in church finance meetings. He began by saying, “I’d like us to begin this meeting with a time of prayer.” The hard-headed business people looked at him with a bit of a shock the first time. He made a little joke of it, “I’m the minister, after all; I decided it was my job to make us do this.” They chuckled, and then they went along with it. He found that he was more grounded in those meetings. There were still sharp disagreements. People still looked to him as the savior. But he was more able to let go and realized that the people had to save their own church if it was going to be saved.

Letting go of ultimate responsibility for the financial life of the churches we lead is a deeply spiritual matter. We can’t delegate leadership, but we can delegate anxiety: downward to those we lead and upward to God. That doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do or that we have no responsibilities, of course. But it positions us differently in relationship to the challenges. There’s a time just to go play golf or go to the movies or get ice cream, and simply let go. Then when we come back to work on the challenges of the ministry, including the finances, we’ll be more energetic and resourceful. We’ll be better able to hear the good ideas of others and respond.

Here are some questions to consider as you engage spiritually with money matters, personally and at church:

How have you experienced God’s abundance and provision?
What causes you to be distracted by anxieties about scarcity?
How can you incorporate your money life into your prayer life?
How can you bring your spiritual leadership at church into the area of money?
For whom do you need to pray about money: people in your church who don’t have enough? Or too much?

Money at church is so often an incredibly serious subject — especially when there isn’t enough of it! This week I was talking with Rev. Dayle Askey, pastor of Creator Lutheran Church in Clackamas, Oregon. Like so many churches, Creator is facing some financial challenges. And, as at many churches, at offering time the plates aren’t very full because most people give monthly, by check. Dayle suggested that people put an additional dollar in the offering plate per member of their family. She said that since they started this a few weeks ago, the ushers have had to walk carefully to bring the plates forward because they have been filled with ones and fives. “It’s playful,” Dayle says. “And it gives people awareness.”

While you can’t solve a budget crunch long-term with ones and fives, being lighthearted about money like this can help people think more creatively about money at church. Creator comes by this naturally: they even have a “fun” link on their home page. In last week’s teleconference, Larry Foster mentioned that Edwin Friedman used to say that anxiety and seriousness were Siamese twins. When we can get less serious, we’ll automatically be less anxious. And that helps us make better decisions.